California Attorney General Rob Bonta led 20 states in a lawsuit on Tuesday alleging the Trump administration unlawfully shared public health insurance information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.
The multistate lawsuit accused the Department of Health and Human Services of violating procedural and privacy laws by transferring residents’ personal Medicaid files to the Department of Homeland Security for ICE to use for immigration enforcement or “population surveillance.” The states are asking the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to block data transfers and order the “impoundment, disgorgement, and destruction of all copies of any Medicaid data containing personally identifiable, protected health information that has already been unlawfully disclosed.”
Recommended Stories
- Hershey’s, Smuckers and others fall into line with MAHA on artificial food dyes
- RFK Jr. reveals why he changed his mind about Trump: ‘Had him pegged as a narcissist’
- RFK Jr. says Fauci is likely liable for COVID-19 pandemic
Bonta said, “The Trump Administration has upended longstanding privacy protections with its decision to illegally share sensitive, personal health data with ICE. In doing so, it has created a culture of fear that will lead to fewer people seeking vital emergency medical care.”
Many of the Democratic-led states included in the lawsuit allow residents without legal status access to state-run versions of Medicaid. The attorneys general have expressed concern that granting ICE access to information from such programs opens the door to targeting illegal immigrants in those health systems.
“This isn’t about cutting waste or going after fraud,” Bonta told reporters at a press conference. “This is about going after vulnerable people who entrusted the state and the federal government to help them access healthcare, a basic human right.”
About 1.6 million illegal immigrants in California are enrolled in Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program. About 49,000 people in Washington who rely on the state’s Medicaid Program, Apple Health, have an immigration status that makes them ineligible for federal funding. An estimated 100,000 residents are enrolled in Oregon’s Healthier Oregon program, which also provides access to Medicaid coverage regardless of immigration status.
The Trump administration has argued that moves to share health data with ICE are legal and merely seek to ensure Medicaid benefits are reserved for U.S. citizens.
Medicaid officials are “aggressively cracking down on states that may be misusing federal Medicaid funds to subsidize care for illegal immigrants — that includes California,” HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon told Politico. “This oversight effort – supported by lawful interagency data sharing with DHS — is focused on identifying waste, fraud, and systemic abuse.”
Washington Attorney General Nick Brown argued otherwise.
“[Medicaid recipients’] data should not go towards creating a giant database of Americans’ personal information or used so that ICE can deport undocumented immigrants because they had to go to the doctor,” he said.
The lawsuit was joined by the attorneys general from California, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.
The Washington Examiner reached out to DHS and ICE for comment.